Posted on Monday, August 10 2009 @ 14:46 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
TDK showed off a roadmap for hard disk drive (HDD) read/write heads at an analyst meeting. The slide revealed HDD makers are expected to introduce 2.5TB 3.5" HDD and 620GB 2.5" HDDs by January 2010.
The roadmap shows a jump to 320GB/platter 2.5-inch drive read heads with such heads in qualification with HDD suppliers now, mass production starting this month and full mass production by December this year. That means we should see HDD suppliers announcing 640GB 2-platter SFF drive products by the end of the year - Seagate already has with its 640GB Free Agent Go - and, if they wish, 960GB 3-platter products, darn near a terabyte. Initial products may rotate at 5400rpm with later ones increasing their spin speed to 7200rpm as the head and media technologies get better and permit the faster rotation.
Turning to desktop drives, TDK is making heads for 500GB/platter drives now and has 640GB/platter heads currently in qualification by its OEMs. It sees a slightly later but faster ramp to mass production, starting in November this year and complete by the end of January, 2010.
Source: The Register
